site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

8
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Such a person's sexual orientation would be "bisexual" since they are attracted to people of either sex.

And does the statute protect people on the basis of their, ahem, "bisexuality"?

Sure. If you wanted to fire a person because they were attracted to both men and women, that would be prohibited. If you wanted to fire them because they were attracted to children, that would be permitted.

If you wanted to fire them because they were attracted to children, that would be permitted.

It used to, but where does it permit this now?

It doesn't explicitly permit it, but neither do it's terms forbid it.

https://www.house.mn.gov/cco/journals/2023-24/J0426057.htm#7102

I think the amendment added to the bill clears this up pretty cleanly.

@wraelk, @AshLael, @zeke5123a

Off topic, but if you're back, I'd love to hear if you have any further comment on that Jaime Reed thing you posted a while back.

I've been doing a bit of digging and am having some trouble figuring out exactly what is going on. It seems as though the basic story is:

Bill amends definition as previously discussed. A bit of a stink gets kicked up about it.

A republican legislator (Niska) responds to that stink by proposing the amendment you link to, which passes easily. But it seems that the bill he was amending was a different one to the actual Take Pride Act (H.F. 447 vs H.F. 1655) I think? And as far as I can tell the Niska amendment language is not included in the current law: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/364.09

Not sure if the Niska amendment has just not taken effect yet or if HF 447 didn't pass or what.

I don't think you have the right law, you want https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/363A.03.

But it also doesn't have the pedophilia clause, and has additional wording that isn't in either revision:

A person may be attracted to men, women, both, neither, or to people who are genderqueer, androgynous, or have other gender identities.

If you look in the revisions you can see that there's only been one revision to that section in 2023, but it doesn't use the new language.

https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bills/bill.php?b=house&f=hf447&ssn=0&y=2023 is the bill, and if you look at the current bill text, that text is not in it: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bills/text.php?number=HF447&type=bill&version=3&session=ls93&session_year=2023&session_number=0 . In fact, very little of the text is in it.

it looks like it was removed after the second version: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bills/text.php?number=HF447&version=2&session=ls93&session_year=2023&session_number=0

As best I can tell, once it got to the Senate they just completely rewrote the bill? https://www.senate.mn/journals/2023-2024/20230522077.pdf#page=824, if I'm understanding this correctly they just amended the bill to delete everything past "this will take effect" and wrote their own bill, which seems unbelievable, but... the bill passed, the text isn't changed, and the latest revision of the bill has the text they changed it to.

they just amended the bill to delete everything past "this will take effect" and wrote their own bill, which seems unbelievable

It isn't out of the ordinary. If you run a search for "Strike all after the enacting clause" in Congress, you will see more than a hundred such amendments proposed in the current session, and if you filter by "status of amendment" you will see that many of them succeeded.

Well, that's depressing.

So @PmMeClassicMemes, it looks like the text you linked to didn't actually go anywhere: the House passed it unanimously, then the Senate overwrote the bill with something completely different. I checked a couple of the legislators and it looks like Democrats voted to overwrite it and Republicans voted against it: it would not surprise me if the House Democrats who voted for the bill initially were aware this was going to happen.

We're left with the law essentially the same as what we were originally discussing, and the next amendment to that section, rather than clearing up the confusion, makes sure we're aware that someone can be attracted to genderqueer or androgynous people.

I'll continue to stand behind my original points.

More comments